I remember watching a documentary on the BBC about the “Plagues of Locusts”…
Under the right conditions Locusts will swarm rapidly stripping fields and damaging crops. But only while food and moisture lasts. Eventually the Locusts swarm moves on or dies off after consuming and devastating fields in their path. So what the heck am I talking about?
Seeing the recent brouhaha about Amazon Kindle spamming splashed all over the mainstream media like , , and many other national and international media outlets. They all pointed their fingers at Private Label Rights (PLR) for supplying the ignorant and the lazy with the ammunition to liter Amazon with garbage. Info marketers are selling the dream of making”easy money” by joining one of the many PLR warehousing membership sites and basically importing all that crap into Amazon “as is” — down to the e-book cover graphic.
They sold this idea that by having hundreds even thousands of these titles on Amazon they could really cash in just be selling it for .99 cents. What happened next was right out of that documentary, the Plague of Locusts unleashed on Amazon. And perhaps at first some of their minions did make some cash but the more of their “how to” courses they sold the more of their minions started uploading the same damn PLR e-books over, and over, and over. Uploaded as is, without making any changes, their only “work” was the time to get it Kindle-ready and uploading it to Amazon.
And now we’re seeing some of these people who bought into this “business model” hook, line, and sinker getting emails from Amazon like this one:
Hello,
We’re contacting you regarding an issue related to title(s), that you published via Kindle Direct Publishing.
The title is either undifferentiated or barely differentiated from an existing title in the Kindle store. We remove such duplicate (or near duplicate) versions of the same book because they diminish the experience for customers. As a result, we will not be selling the following title(s) in the Kindle store.
Your “Title Removed From This Post (ID: XXXXXXX)”
If you have any questions regarding the review process, you can write to xxxxx@amazon.com.
That’s the actual message someone from the received from Amazon when they began to upload PLR titles onto Amazon. There is also another post in the Warrior Forum that Amazon is also dropping the price down to the original title. I haven’t been able to see proof of that but thankfully Amazon is taking action
and cleaning house.
The lazy approach never lasts long. 10+ years ago anyone could put up an AdSense site up and it would start to make money (it really was that easy back then). Next up, the “put up crappy AdSense sites” courses hit the Internet marketing space. So they began to sell templates and courses so folks could throw up thousands of worthless AdSense sites in a day(s). That Plague of the Locust ravished and devastated Google until they had to act and Google killed it. The mark of that slap is probably still visible for these MFA (made for AdSense) thin site peeps.
This happens on other things as well. In the Internet marketing space we seem hell-bent in annihilating the goose laying the golden eggs. And it’s now just happened with the throw up PLR as a Kindle e-book on Amazon. Now Amazon is getting rid of it… Ba-bye. Good riddance.
And again PLR gets a black eye when PLR alone isn’t the problem, it’s the way it was used on Amazon which gives it a bum rap and gave it the recent negative national media attention. The ironic part is that if you use quality PLR (from the likes of and not the PLR warehouse type sites) and put some elbow grease into it vs. wasting time doing the PLR “as is” splatter approach you’ll make more money in the long run even though you’ll have a lot less titles.
I feel like shouting it from the IM rooftops… it isn’ that hard to take quality PLR and make it your own. Yes, it does take work and I guess that’s the problem for a lot of people that waste time looking for that big red easy button. Believe me I know it’s easy to talk to yourself into taking the lazy approach but you’ll be better off in the long run.
With the recent Amazon crack down and because I do advocate using PLR to self-publish books and e-books on Amazon I want to make sure you’re not confused on what I mean…
- Do not use PLR from the “warehouse” membership sites. The quality of that PLR is usually very poor to say the least. Even if you do a heavy re-write so many folks are uploading it “as is” that part of your work will be flagged by Amazon so you’ve wasted time re-writing it.
- Use PLR from quality PLR writers. Extra bonus if they limit the number of licenses sold.
- Play close attention to their PLR licenses. Make sure they don’t allow to provide their PLR to PLR membership sites where it will get passed around like a bottle of Schnapps at a frat party.
- For the love of all that is holy, put elbow grease into it. Remember nothing is as easy as the sales copy for the “Amazon Kindle Riches” type products claim to be. And the dudes selling you those type of courses are making their money from that not by uploading thousands of PLR e-books onto Amazon. Trust me on that one. Especially now, I would suggest you just use the PLR as research and re-write that bad boy (if you don’t like to re-write PLR… hire someone to do it for you. It will be a lot cheaper than having exclusive content written for you or using a ghostwriter).
- Never use the graphics provided in the PLR package. If you a regular reader and subscriber, I know that I sound like a broken record on this but I could care less about the graphics provided in a PLR package. Content is what I’m after.
- Stop throwing mud at the wall to see if any of it sticks. Do your proper research on the niche and subject matter BEFORE you buy the PLR and you begin to rewrite it.
I hate to sound like with all this but these type of short cuts won’t work long-term. It’s true you won’t end up with thousands of titles in days following my suggestions but your titles will be of quality and you’ll make more money from less titles than the other guys/gals in the long run and you won’t be an Amazon spammer…
Don't be this person!
Sheesh, Alan, your post is on a subject both you and I feel strongly about. I think you said it all very well so I’m going to try not to get carried away here.
Yes, start with quality PLR. Thanks for the shoutout!
Yes, rewrite it and add to it.
Yes, I think people who bought into these get rich with Amazon Kindle by slapping up PLR that’s the same as everyone else’s have been sold a bill of goods.
Yes, when people do stuff like this it gives all of us Internet marketers a bad name.
Yes, it takes some elbow grease to make yours different. If you don’t feel confident doing it, then outsource it. There are lots of good writers out there.
Take the time, put in the work, build your business for the long-term!
Peggy
Peggy Baron recently posted..
P.S. PLR is meant to be a starting point. I think of it like Playdoh; to be molded into what you want it to be. When you get your hands working with the Playdoh, the end result will surely be different from someone else’s.
Peggy
Peggy Baron recently posted..
Excellent points Peggy! You’re such an awesome writer. Your comment said everything I was trying to convey in my post so succinctly while I rambled on.
And I love your Playdoh comparison! One of my fave toys as a young’un. Thanks for your comment.
[...] my last blog post I talked about how we as Internet marketers can act like a locust plague. Swarming a good thing [...]